It's still a work very early in progress. I have settled on a general style and font (switching between the ones I found on dafont.com and elsewhere). The map is based off a 17th century Dutch map of the region; though I may go and include more of Indonesia. The location of some of the current labels is a bit off, that's due to the changing of fonts in between, this will be corrected; more labels and prominent geographical features will be added. Blurriness of symbols vs. landmass also needs to be adjusted yet.

The idea is to provide a fictional map of Sinbad's voyages with a bit of eye candy and Arabian Nights feeling to it. There's some beautiful (black and white) art from old prints of the the stories in the public domain that I will try to colour and incorporate as part of an ornamentic border of the map and, where appropriate, on the map itself. :)

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Sigurd

07-21-2009, 05:18 PM

Sounds like a great and worthwhile project.

Looking forward to it.

Sigurd

Syt

07-25-2009, 02:43 PM

A small update. Generally I like how the cliparts blend in. I need to "smooth off" the ones that have square edges at the moment. More bitmaps will be added, and spread to not clutter the map too much.

The idea is now to have in the borders smaller maps of the islands Sinbad travelled to; the islands will be labelled (surprise) 1 - 7.

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ravells

07-25-2009, 03:04 PM

Very nice indeed, I like it a lot. Just to throw in some ideas: if you want to make it a maritime type map you may want to detail the costs but leave the inland areas 'uncoloured'. The oceans have a repeating texture you may want to get rid of (as does the land). I really like the clip art, but I think it might look better with more of it and smaller. Some labels on the journey paths (e.g. 'Here Sinbad slew the Gorgon') maybe? Most of all I'd really go to town on making a beautiful sea texture. I'm not a CC3 user but you could do it in PSP easy. It's hard to say, depends on whether you want it to look handdrawn or sattelite. If handdrawn (which would definitely suit this type of map) you might want to lose the textures altogether and use lots of labels and handdrawn effects...

... looking forward to see where you take this.

Syt

07-27-2009, 02:05 PM

Thanks for the comments, ravells. :)

Yes, the tiling is noticeable on smalle scales, when looking at it in large it's not as bad but still noticeable, you're right. I will play around with some different textures and/or colours.

I agree that bitmaps should be smaller and mor numerous. I was looking at how they'd blend in with what I have now (I put them in sepia and added transparencies which turned out relatively fine for most - CC3 has the advantage that you can insert images, then edit them in your favorite editor and it'll update them automatically in the map).

I want the map definitely to be handdrawn. I'm not much a fan of satellite maps in most cases - I prefer maps that fit a certain setting or theme (e.g. hand drawn maps for fantasy, mercator style for age of discovery, "cartographic" for industrial etc.). In Google Maps terms I prefer the "Terrain" over "Map" over "Satellite".

Work will be slow this week as we're having month end going on in accounting which will reach into next week and then I'll be on Fuerteventura for two weeks. I'll see if I can finish this one. :)

Syt

08-09-2009, 03:32 PM

I'll have to call this one officially "abandoned". :(

I didn't find the time in recent weeks and tomorrow I fly to the Canaries. Sorry. :oops:

ravells

08-09-2009, 06:36 PM

sorry to hear that Syt. Shame it was a really cool idea and entry too.